


Help Me Understand

by ayamirin



Series: keep passing the open windows [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco, The Heart Rate of a Mouse Series - Anna Green, Young Veins
Genre: 1980s, Angst, Discussion of AIDS/STDs, Further Explanations in Author's Note, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Porn With Plot, the heart rate of a mouse - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 02:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11026266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayamirin/pseuds/ayamirin
Summary: [Fanfic for THROAM]1984, the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic is taking center stage in the minds of Americans everywhere. Brendon receives a troubling call from California. Ryan tries to support Brendon but things aren't that simple.=======I sigh. I honestly don’t want to fight. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.Not about this.“ He… He slept around, Brendon. He did stupid things and made stupid choices. We-we were different.”





	Help Me Understand

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfic to the fanfic [The Heart Rate of a Mouse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/712953) written by Anna Green. This ficlet serves as an UNOFFICIAL prequel to the story, " [Los Angeles, 1984](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10745499/chapters/23821356%0A) ". Please read both THROAM and Los Angeles, 1984 to understand what is going on.

I would never admit it to him. I think he knows; he's quick and willing when I suggest it. Sweet kisses of encouragement between nimble fingers working at buttons and buckles. He acts indifferent, even feigns shock, but he never lets on that he knows I enjoy this. My ego is too fragile to be bruised, even now in this moment, ten years later.

I surprise myself when I do this. It's addicting -- the feeling of his calloused fingers trailing up my sides, light and feather like, sending electric shocks in their wake. My skin prickled with goosebumps as they rest on my hips, thumbs pressing into the junction of my hips and waist as they guide me. My hands hold onto his wrists, fingers feeling for his quicken pulse against the skin, as roll my hips and take him in inch by inch. 

I love it. I love watching him writhe beneath me. I love feeling him stretch me, filling me up thick and full. And when we find that right angle, I can barely breath, and it's hard for me to take it slow. My cock is painfully hard, pre-cum leaking from the tip… but I don't want to let go.  

No, not yet. I want to have the control. I want to break him beneath me, in me.

“ Shit…” He gasps as I sink onto him as his hips rise up against me.

His eyes are closed. Dark hair is slick against his forehead and neck from the sweat. He bites his lower lip, swollen from the kisses and sucking from earlier.

My boy is a complete mess. I love it. 

“ Come for me, baby…” I gasp as he hits my prostate again. “ Oh god…”

He drives into me with a grunt. The pace quickening with frantic thrusts that make me release my hold on his wrists and steady myself by resting them against the flat plains of his taut chest. The sounds we make are obscene and animalistic. The slapping of skin against skin, the sound of his dick slipping in and out of my lube slicked hole, the dirty throaty moans slipping from my mouth as I meet him thrust for thrust.

Sweat drips down my face, clinging to the ends of my curled hair, falling and mixing on his hot skin beneath me. I feel like I'm breaking apart and my cock is unbearably hard. I can feel his hand wrap around my dick, his thumb swiping over the slit and I nearly fall over from the touch.

“ Fuck, Bren, d-don't…” I swallow as much air as I can and push his hand away. It's hard to breath. Everything is so hot. He rises up and kisses me, slipping his tongue into my open mouth.

It's sloppy. Unrefined. Crude. I can't get enough.

“ Baby…” He mumbles as he breaks the kiss. I can tell he's close. “ Baby… baby…” It's all incoherent rambling. His thrusts are rapid, frantic, and growing increasingly erratic as he teeters closer to the edge.

He falls back onto the mattress, pushing deep into the pillows as he finally lets go with the thrusts of his hips, burying his cock as deep as he can inside of me. I can feel him come inside. His warm semen claiming me as he climaxes. 

“ Y-yes…! That's… that's it -- !” I groan as I clench around him, trying to milk whatever I can.

That feeling of his cum inside me is something I love. I'll never get tired of it. I take it greedily with each roll of my hips, reaching behind to where we’re joined and pressing a finger against my stretched hole. I feel his cum leaking out my ass with each rise and fall of his spent dick slipping in and out. It's a creamy mess. He grips onto my hips and forces me to stop; he's too sensitive and I take that as a hint to roll off of him, his dick slipping out with a dirty pop. I roll over onto my back.

Brendon is fast. I am always amazed at how he can move without needing to recover unlike me. He is already at the foot of our bed on his knees and he rests his hands on my thighs. Without warning, he spreads my legs apart, exposing me to the private conclave that is our bedroom. It's almost vulgar the way he looks down at me, sprawled across the grey sheets like some wanton whore with my dick, balls and stretched hole exposed. There's a hunger in his eyes as if I am the most attractive thing he has ever seen.

“ The things you do to me…” His voice is laced with lust, deep and throaty. I can only nod, throwing my head back into the pillows and covering my eyes with my arm.

We're addicted; it's a good kind of drug. Something I can't bare to quit.

He dips forward as his hands slide up my inner thigh slowly. I can feel his mouth against my dick; soft full lips pressing against the tip. He breaths me in and I shudder.

“ You need to let yourself cum before I do, Ry…” He whispers breathlessly.

He presses two fingers against my hole and I groan from the contact. It's a mess -- lube and cum mixed together in this sloppy white substance that is the universal language for this person got fucked. He smears it against my hole and his two fingers before dipping them inside me. He starts to fuck me again with his fingers, crooking the digits to hit that spot that sends pleasure ripping through my body. His mouth takes me and he's sucking me off. It's not long before I'm coming hard into his warm mouth. Loud and unashamed. He swallows it all, sucking and licking until I'm too sensitive and gently pushing him away with a whine that even I'm too ashamed to admit to doing. 

I feel his fingers slide out of me and him wiping the mess against my thigh. He crawls up the length of my body and I reach over with one hand, weaving my fingers through his hair, and push his head down for a kiss. I open my mouth and he greedily accepts the invitation, slipping his tongue into my mouth and deepening the kiss. I can taste myself on him and I groan from the thought of it.

“ You like this too much…” He whispers against my lips as he breaks the kiss. He pulls away enough to get a look at my face.

“ I don't.” I lie with a roll of my eyes.

Brendon hums with an air of amusement as he rolls onto his back, one arm propped under his head, the other resting on his stomach. I'm still trying to catch my breath.

“ You're not a good liar, Mister Ross.” He says with a smug edge to his voice. I don't even need to turn my head around to see the matching smirk on his face. I know it's there.

Yes, you won, baby. You won.

I ignore him, sitting up to reach over him and grab my pack of cigarettes and lighter off the night stand. I shake the pack and take out a cigarette before offering Brendon one. He shakes his head and I raise an eyebrow curiously. It's not like him to decline a cigarette but I just think nothing of it. I toss the pack on to the nightstand next to my side on the bed and light the cigarette, taking a long drag. 

“ Since when did you stop smoking?” I ask with a heavy haze of smoke leaving my mouth and nose. I toss the lighter somewhere in the room.

I don't hear where the Zippo lands. It probably landed on a shirt or a pair of jeans.

Our clothes are strewn all over the place; a sign of how desperate we were only a couple of hours prior. Usually, given how busy our schedules have been with His Side’s continuing success and my return as a solo artist, most of the sex has been scheduled. We take our time, sometimes even fit in a dinner and a movie, like an old monogamous couple trying to squeeze sex in between raising the kids.

But this was spontaneous. Bad news had arrived in the form of a long distance phone call from California.

I am not a person who's good with bad news, especially news that involves our good old buddy Death. So, I try to console with the best way I know how -- with my lips and fingers. Make him forget, or at least remember what he _has_ and not what he has lost.

It's selfish but I'm a selfish person.

Brendon plays with the sheets idly. He pulls at them, twists them with his fingers, and then he'll smooth them out as if erasing the damage he had already done to the cotton threads. I lie and wait for his answer with my cigarette burning away in between my fingertips.

“ Well,” He starts and I already know where this is going. “ My father's death… it put things into perspective, you know? He died from cancer.”

I take a drag.

I share some guilt when I do it but knowing my past history, it's either this or pills, and I actually have something to live for these days.

So I just nod and listen.

“ My sister said it was lung cancer in the letter. He was a smoker, or at least he was when I still lived there, and with all that news about smoking causes cancer … and with all this news about genetics…. I don't wanna take that risk. I don't wanna die like that.”

I know. I read the letter his sister had mailed to his address private P.O. Box, short and to the point: Our father died of lung cancer this past February. We laid him to rest a week afterwards. He's resting with the angels now. 

Brendon mentioned to me, tears falling down his beautiful face, that he was a heavy smoker. He'd remember the pipe that always hung from his lips and the strong smell of dried tobacco in the house. I couldn't understand why he was crying. This man broke his arm; tried to be the homosexuality out of his youngest son. I was glad when my father died. Brendon cried when his passed on.

I had offered to take him there -- to the grave site. 

We never went.

“ Bren… it's not.” I stop and put out the cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. I can't even finish it now with him guilt tripping unintentionally. “ You're different. You're not gonna die from cancer.”

My father died of liver disease from drinking too much. I was a lush and addicted to pain pills for half my life. If I end up going out like my good ol’ pops, so be it. Like father, like son as they say. I'm a hypocrite but only to protect him. I don't like to see him in pain.

“ If cancer doesn't take me, then I'll probably die from whatever William has.”

Oh.

He went there and I am not prepared to follow him.

I didn't get to talk on the phone when that call from California came in. I was sitting in the living room of our apartment with an acoustic in my hand when Brendon got up from the couch to answer it. Some person from his days in San Francisco; no one I knew personally. But whatever that person said managed to take the air from my boy’s lungs and nearly made him fall over onto himself. I rushed over to his side but he pushed me away, holding the receiver close to his ear and listening with tear filled eyes and shallow breaths.

William Beckett. The man that hated me for what I did to Brendon. The man that thought I would drive Brendon into madness. The man who would do anything to make sure Brendon and I never got together. Who later, with much reluctance, accepted our relationship even if he couldn't stand being in the same room as me.

That man had caught the gay virus. 

Well, apparently there was a name for it now: AIDS.

It was the work of God himself according to crazies with their bibles. Ridding the world of the Devil’s sin corrupting humanity; the sin of lust. The debates on television focused all about the gay culture and how we just love to fuck. As long as it had two legs, a dick, and a pair of balls we would fuck it. We all loved to go to bath houses; the prime hunting grounds for no-strings attached gay sex. Burn the gay bars because God gave the okay to flood the world with the gay disease to kill us all. Homosexuality is bad and this is reason why.

Well, that's how they portrayed it in the media.

We had discussed it a few times, Brendon and I, when the news first broke out. We didn't know much at the time… there was no information that really explained how it all worked. Apparently you caught it from having sex, and apparently the only sex you could get it from was anal sex. So we talked, and then talked some more, until it became a conversation we’d have daily.

How many partners have you had? Aren't you afraid you might have caught it? Did you think that one guy at that party back in ‘74 might have had it? What about that time in Europe, when you went to Paris? Did you fuck anyone then? 

It was becoming this twisted form of paranoia.

If we caught anything, it was already too late. It made no sense to start putting on condoms now when we've eaten each other out, swallowed cum, and taken it up the ass more times than I could bother counting in the decade of our long and complicated relationship. It just cemented us against pursuing threesomes and staying monogamous. 

How do you even find out if you got it? It's not like you can walk up to a hospital as Ryan Ross, famous award winning singer/songwriter, and ask for a test to see if you haven't contracted the gay disease. You just don't do things like that in a world where you can end up beaten and mutilated out in a cornfield or a back alley with a bullet to the back of the head because you liked cock.

Brendon Roscoe and Ryan Ross were straight celebrities, not two fags currently cuddled up in a bed stained with cum, with one enjoying a load up his ass while the other took a cock in his mouth like a professional cocksucker.

No.

There are women masturbating to Brendon’s music. Men getting over those women with my music.

This wasn't the music written by a bunch of fags who slept around in the 70s and will probably die a horrible death by the end of this decade. No one listens to that music. Brendon Roscoe was an eligible, young bachelor rumored to be dating models and socialites. Ryan Ross was damaged goods, a conflicted artist whose woman was his guitar.

That just wasn't happening.

“ You’re not gonna die.” I eventually say.

“ William is gonna be dead by the end of the year. What makes you think I don't already have it?” He's pulling at the sheets again. I stop him with my hand over his.

“ You don't have it.” I stress these words because I want to believe it. If he doesn't have it, I don't have it. There's no going back from what we just did if it were true.

I rather not think about it and I hope he would just drop the topic. I’ve seen the pictures of what they look like when Death comes knocking on their door; I don’t want to end up that way. I don’t want to see him end up that way. My beautiful boy should not be reduced to a underweight shell of his former self ridden with sores and bruises, rotting alive.

“ How do you know? It's the same thing with the cancer, how do you know? How do any of us know?”

I let him go and sit up, ignoring the throbbing soreness. I swing my legs over the side the bed. The carpet feels soft against my feet but I'm not relaxed. I'm frustrated again. I thought we had just ended this conversation when I decided to blow him on the couch in the living room. That was the whole purpose to letting him fuck me; so he could fuck his frustrations away and we could go back to doing whatever we did best: enjoying life.

Because life up until a few years ago was a cruel bitch.

But here we are, yet again, pushing ourselves over the edge because we just can’t let things go.

“ Because I just know, Bren, okay? I just do.” I get up and walk over to the bathroom.

“ We went to the same clubs back in San Francisco, you know.” He tells me and I stop. I could walk into the bathroom and lock myself in, but what good will that do? It’ll only make the situation worst. I can already see it: He’ll get angry, accuse me of ignoring him and running away from our problems, and I’ll accuse him of being dramatic and emotional.  

I know what he’s trying to imply. I heard the stories before when I was a curious, yet pitifully confused young man on a tour I did not want to be on, surrounded by people I did not want to be with. Eventually I had indulged myself in rendezvous in dim litted bars with nameless men during those periods when I wasn’t with Brendon. A certain look from a man from across the hall that leads to a quick fuck in a dirty bathroom stall. There’s no need for life stories or names; just the security of anonymity since most of us were a bunch of closet cases anyway.

“ We were dumb back then. I didn’t use protection-- _Christ_ , Ry… This shit is eating me up.”

We were young and dumb. That is what I want to say. The excuse, the seven words to make all the problems go away. A bandaid to cover the ugly truth. But, it was true -- we were young. What does a couple of twenty four and twenty three year olds know in a period where everyone was fucking everyone like a relay race to the finish line, white lines of cocaine rained down freely like powder on the first day of snow, and monogamy was a symbol of our parent’s era that we laughed at.  

It was simple, really. There’s no need for protection when you can’t get pregnant. Condoms were nothing more than a congratulatory proof for a job well done. You didn’t knock the broad up, congratulations! People weren’t thinking about these diseases then; even if someone caught an STD, it wasn’t like a trip to the clinic and a shot couldn’t solve the problem. It was a kept secret; even the health officials were at a loss when half of Greenwich Village succumbed to dysentery back in the mid 70s, just when I had moved to the city.  

We were so dumb and look where it landed us. Locked up in a room, naked as the day we were born, recovering from an intense fuck with his cum slowly dripping down my leg, trying to justify what we did five, ten, _fifteen_ years ago.

I lean against the door to our bathroom. He sits up on the bed.

“ William… he was,” I lick my lips, trying to find the right words. Brendon knows me and him were oil and water. We played nice for him but I knew he hated me. “ He was different.”

“ What do you mean _different_?” 

I really should have kept my mouth shut and listened because he’s giving me that look. The one that says, _you’re no better, you confused little boy_. The one I would see many times years ago when we didn’t know what we wanted from each other, afraid to take that leap and just _trust_ each other. Because it was so much better to hurt and break each other down than build each other up. 

I sigh. I honestly don’t want to fight. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Not about this.

“ He… He slept around, Brendon. He did stupid things and made stupid choices. We-we were different.”

“ We’re not different, Ryan!” He yells. I watch as his fingers curl around the bedsheets, his chest rising and falling with each breath, his body trembling. “ William, you, me, S-shane... That kid from Paris, the guy from Machias… We’re a bunch of fags that fucked around because it felt _good_ and it felt _liberating_. And now…” I can hear his voice crack and he’s not even looking at me. But I want him to.

I can hear his voice trembling and strained but he won’t look at me.

Look at me. Let me see your tears. Don’t hide from me. Do not hide _this_ from me. _Help me understand_. 

“ And now… we’re paying the price. So how can you stand there and say _he’s_ different from us? How can you say that? Are you honestly still in denial about your sexuality, Ryan?” 

“ I am not in denial about anything. This has nothing to do with my sexuality.” I say calmly. It almost surprises me how calm I am. “ I am just trying to say that William lived a different life. That's all.”

“ Guys who haven't had relations with a man in several years are dying from this. Why is that so hard for you to understand? It's in the fucking pamphlets.”

Of course he would pick up those pamphlets they’re passing out at the ‘gay sex clinics’ in town. It doesn't bother him that someone could recognize him and out him for being gay. That would end his career; all the rumors now confirmed to be true: the singer of His Side is a flaming faggot and more than likely is gonna die from the gay disease like the rest of the heretics. 

But I don't chastise him for that. It's a small grain in a desert of issues we're being forced to face. So, I try and explain myself. Make him understand my point.

“ Because we were different, Brendon!” I sigh and bang my head against the bathroom door softly. “ You fooled around fifteen years ago, but, you quickly settled down and then… there was us. We… I wasn't… We just did things differently, okay?”

Let this be over. We’ll cross that bridge if we ever have to.

But not tonight. 

So, I walk over to him. Slowly, hesitantly, as my feet across the carpeted floor to where he sat on the bed. I get on my knees and take his trembling hands into mine. He looks at me and I look up into red rimmed eyes. 

“ I want to live, Ry.”

I lean upwards and kiss the side of his mouth. Featherlike and short.

“ And we will.”

We will. We will.

But he pushes me away. His hands slipping from my own as he stands up. My heart drops that instant, like I'm losing him and no matter what I say will reach his ears. He steps over me and walks to the bathroom. I watch solemnly as he opens the door and steps inside, closing the door behind him.

I am left alone on my knees covered with his bite marks, bruises from his mouth and fingers, and smeared with his drying come between my ass cheeks and inner thighs. I kneel there, with my hands at my side, lost in my thoughts as I hear the shower come on from behind the door. I try to understand him… I try to understand what he wants me to believe but I can’t. 

Death is a scary thing. Its one of the two things we’re guaranteed to have in life: death and taxes. I’ve learned to accept it. I wished for my father to die quicker, disappointed that Death didn’t take him sooner. In some fucked up away, I just thought that everyone handled death the same way I did.

I stand up and walk to the bathroom. I slowly open the door and step into the strong mist and steam that comes from behind the shower curtain. I approach the shower and slowly push the curtain aside. He’s standing under the shower head; no lather, just water hitting his bare skin and turning it red from the heat. I step into the shower from behind and wrap my hands around his waist as I burry my face against the crook of his shoulder.

We stand there under the near-scalding hot water. We don’t say anything as we let the water wash away our sin. 

I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know how to help him through this.  

The next morning I catch an early flight to Bismark.

**Author's Note:**

> I love THROAM and the Extra chapters that followed their relationship throughout the decades after the initial story ended. 
> 
> " [Los Angeles, 1984](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10745499/chapters/23821356%0A) " resonated with me the most. I always wanted to know what the argument was about -- I later learned it was mostly with the deaths of two important people in Brendon's life. So I wanted to write a fanfic about it. 
> 
> I humbly apologize to Anna Green if I mischaracterized or overstepped myself by writing this. 
> 
> In regards to the the things THROAM!Ryan mentions in this story, I wanted to touch upon the problem of STDs in the gay community in the 70s and how that directly related to the stigma of the disease in the early 80s before heterosexual celebrities started coming forward towards the end of the decade, gradually destigmatizing the disease as a 'gay only' epidemic. 
> 
> I don't think Ryan understands Brendon completely despite the efforts on his part to try. Probably because he's lived in this bubble and keeps himself from associating himself with the culture, unlike Brendon who, in his own way, does what he can to give opportunities to the gay community at that time. 
> 
> Ryan already has prejudice against William, I think, and his choice of words are simply ignorance on his part. He knows William has been in and out of several relationships/flings and assumes his lifestyle has lead to him contracting the disease. Though, more than likely, William contracted the disease from one of his previous, long term and volatile relationships. Basically, in short, Ryan continues to carry homophobic prejudices without realizing it. It's not intentional and he doesn't mean any harm. It's simply his world view. That was my approach when writing this piece.
> 
> This is an interesting read about AIDS and the stigma of it, you can [Read it here](http://www.ittakesbrains.com/OLeary-TheSyndemicOfSTDsAmongGayMen.html).
> 
> THROAM features unsafe sex as a prominent component to Ryan and Brendon's sexual relationship. It's almost a kink for the two, but, as a sign of the times it also brought a lot of risks. Many to which many were either ignorant of or willingly ignored them. The dysentery outbreak was the result of men becoming ill through the contact of fecal matter during unprotected sex. Because of how underground the community was, the city health officials believed the water was contaminated, not that these individuals were getting sick from poor safe sex practices and that in turn spreading throughout the community.
> 
> Safe sex is very, _very_ important.
> 
> "And The Band Played On" is another great read on AIDS in the gay community, [which you can read more about the dysentery outbreak in Greenwich Village](https://books.google.com/books?id=v3kgvUsV9tcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false) \-- there is also an [HBO movie based on the book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua5RrxvfVJU). 
> 
> I talked to my mother about that whole scene in NYC during the early 80s. She was in her mid twenties at that time and hung out in that circle, which also influenced most of Ryan's dialogue throughout this story. She lost one of her best friends, her childhood friend, to the disease at the time. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
